Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Donald Trump keeps rolling along. And things keep getting worse for Hillary Clinton. The real campaign hasn't even started yet. A lot of Clinton's misery is of her own making. Trump is a sociopath -- who will say anything and stop at nothing to win. But, Gerry Caplan writes, things will really get bad when "Kochtopus" is unleashed from its underwater lair. The meme refers to:

Charlie and David Koch and the astonishingly rich and powerful gang of
extreme right-wing billionaires they have quietly organized over the
past few decades. They have already wreaked havoc among Democrats and
undermined any number of progressive causes.

They may operate underwater. But they are now well known:

This record is meticulously documented by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer in her terrifying new book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

Mayer
shows how the syndicate that the Kochs have organized has been
responsible for everything from the emergence of the Tea Party to the
charge that Obama’s health-care act provides for “death panels” to the
widespread denial of climate change across the United States. The Kochs
and many of their allies are themselves oil billionaires who hate
environmentalists, government regulation and paying taxes. If Trump is
dangerously unpredictable, Koch and his plutocratic pals are only too
predictable.

They will, as they always do, use smears, lies, distortions,
fabrications, fear-mongering – whatever it takes, or costs. The Kochs
and their fellow conspirators are pledged to spend no less than a cool $889-million fighting the Democratic nominee this year.

Trump will deliver the fear, lies and distortions. Kochtopus will pay for them. Who says you can't buy and election?

Monday, May 30, 2016

Tim Harper wrote his last column yesterday. In it, he reviewed the state of Canada's three major parties -- which have all held conventions in the last four months:

The three gatherings have provided a real-time barometer on the state of politics in this country.

New Democrats chose a coup and chaos by deposing leader Tom Mulcair last month and their short-term prospects look grim.

Conservatives
this weekend were waiting to see whether their so-called A-listers will
actually run for their leadership or whether a perceived prospect of
another seven years in opposition will give some pause.

What most distinguished the Liberal convention was its youthful energy:

The youth gave the gathering energy even if
there was precious little to get excited about. Party greybeards were in
the minority.

No one is making 2019
predictions this early in the Liberal term, but there can be no question
the party feels good about its future.

Harper warned all that could change:

It was a great weekend to be a Liberal in Winnipeg.

It may never get any better, but it cannot last.

It never does.

You
don’t have to trust me on that one. As Trudeau repeatedly pointed out,
it was five years ago this month that this party had been all but left
for dead.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Any honest examination of Harper’s nine-odd years in office would
find a government that wandered all over the intellectual map, boasting
of its commitment to balanced budgets while adding $150 billion to the
national debt, talking of its respect for free markets while launching
1970s-style industrial-subsidy programs, praising the military while
denying it adequate equipment, and so on.

Its defenders point to all the things other governments might have
done — a national daycare program, say — that Harper’s didn’t. But we
could as well list all of the conservative policies it failed to enact,
from privatization to deregulation to reform of social programs. We
might talk of how the party’s social conservatives were gagged, or how
the party of democratic conservatism became the party of one-man rule.

There was much that it did that it shouldn’t have — a long list that
would include abusing the prerogatives of Parliament, packing the Senate
with spendthrifts and cronies, and attempting to skew elections via the
Fair Elections Act — and much else that it tried to do but failed, from
reforming the Senate to building pipelines.

And, Coyne admits, the Liberals are rapidly undoing what Harper left on the books. However, he gives Harper credit for uniting a party which tends to self destruct:

The Diefenbaker sweep in 1958 was reduced to a minority in just four
years. The Mulroney sweep in 1984, likewise, carried within it the seeds
of its later demise. Both were too sudden to last.

Time will tell whether the Harper Party survives this weekend's convention and beyond.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Not very likely, says David Orchard, who was betrayed by Peter Mackay, when Orchard threw his support behind Mackay's bid for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party. Mackay threw in his lot with Stephen Harper. And Progressive Conservatism went out the window:

The party's leadership will likely continue to hew hard right, says a
prominent member of the former Progressive Conservatives, David
Orchard.

Orchard was famously misled by Peter MacKay
in 2003 when the Canadian Alliance merged with the Progressive
Conservatives to created the modern Conservative Party.

Orchard was running for the party
leadership and dropped out to throw his support behind MacKay on the
condition MacKay would not allow the merger of the two parties. Later
that year MacKay sealed the deal with Stephen Harper's party.

Those who helped MacKay twist the knife
still hold most of the power in the Conservative Party, Orchard told the
Tyee, and that will prevent the party from shifting towards the centre.

As Harper existed stage right on Thursday night, there was no sign that the party would reject what he stood for. And that's a big problem:

Studies show
younger voters in Canada, and in much of the western world, lean more
to the left than in previous decades and tend to be more populist.

Meanwhile, Conservatives are trying to
rebuild their popularity after Stephen Harper's long, hard shift of the
movement rightwards.

Harper prioritized the oil industry, passed
the controversial Anti-Terrorism Act, refused to fund abortions in
developing countries and proposed a telephone line for Canadians to
snitch on each other if they saw a suspected a barbaric cultural
practice was committed.

"The past is no place to linger," Harper told his audience on Thursday night. But that is where the Conservatives plan to plant their flag.

Friday, May 27, 2016

This year's American presidential campaign has given citizens around the world much to trouble their dreams. But, Murray Dobbins writes, behind the ugliness something good may be emerging -- the end of corporate globalization:

Increasingly grim inequality has revealed the broken promise and
American workers are pissed. That is in large part what drives the
mind-boggling Trump phenomenon in the U.S.: it's not exactly class
warfare but Trump supporters sense the system as a whole -- political
and economic -- is truly broken. And the support for Bernie Sanders is
as close to class conflict as the U.S. ever gets. For the first time in
over 30 years, these corporate rights deals are a hot U.S. election
issue, with all three remaining candidates opposing the TPP.

But perhaps equally important, the state apparatus itself is showing
cracks in its own consensus. This has taken the form of leaks from
within the U.S. government about the TTIP and a government study of the
benefits of the TPP to the U.S. Both present genuine threats to the
future of these agreements in the U.S. And defeats in the U.S. could be
the death knell for these deals everywhere.

And the government Cone of Silence which has been erected to protect the corporate juggernaut is starting to crack:

The leak regarding the TTIP came right on the heels of the typical
reassuring noises from the Obama administration regarding protection for
labour and environment standards in the TTIP. According to the New Republic article,
"The Free-Trade Consensus Is Dead": "[d]ocuments leaked by Greenpeace
Netherlands revealed that U.S. negotiators working on a trade deal with
the European Union have actually been pressuring their trading partners
to lower those same standards." The leak was a revelation to the French
trade minister who declared that the talks were "likely to stop
altogether" as a result. (In 1998 France killed the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment, the largest deal ever conceived.)

The second nail in the coffin of free trade consensus in the U.S. came from a U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) analysis
of the benefits the U.S. could expect from the even larger deal, the
TPP. The report, released this past week, will be difficult for
promoters to explain away:

"[T]he ITC estimates a worsening balance of trade for 16 out of 25
U.S. agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors... Indeed, output
in the manufacturing sector would be $11.2 billion lower with TPP than
without it in 2032... the proposed 12-nation trade deal will increase
the U.S. global trade deficit by $21.7 billion by 2032."

It's worth remembering that, when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, everything in the United States changed. Hell hath no fury like a nation that's been lied to. Dobbin knows how things work:

Once members of the political elite begin to question the high priests
of free trade, the spell is broken, and all sorts of alternative
political narratives present themselves. It takes an accumulation of
unlikely suspects breaking with the consensus before that happens and we
have already seen some high-profile defectors
from the TPP -- including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, economist
Jeffrey Sachs and in Canada RIM co-founder Jim Balsillie. At first the
Teflon seemed to hold, but there is always a time lag when it comes to
cultural change and their interventions are still playing out.

In Canada, we haven't reached that point. In fact, the Liberals are making noises about bowing to the corporate sacred cow. They would be wise to watch what is unfolding south of the border.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

If there was one policy which doomed the Harperites in the last election, it was their steadfast refusal to do anything about climate change. Chantal Hebert writes:

Last October, a mismanaged election campaign only compounded the
decade-long mismanagement of some core policies. Few of those are more
closely identified with Harper’s leadership than the party’s dismissive
approach to climate change. On his watch, it became part of the
Conservative brand and an albatross around the party’s neck.

At both ends of the nation, Harper's refusal to tackle the problem led to his defeat:

Last October, Harper’s approach paid few dividends in the parts of Atlantic Canada where projects such as TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline otherwise enjoy widespread support. His candidates were beaten across the region.

It
failed even more spectacularly in British Columbia. Going into the last
campaign, B.C. was a long-standing pillar of Conservative support. On
the scale of the party’s past presence in the province, Canada’s
Conservatives are paying a visit to a field of ruins this weekend. Here
are some numbers:

In British Columbia -- which had adopted a carbon tax -- the numbers tell the story:

The Conservatives came out of the last election holding only 10
of 42 B.C. seats — seven fewer than the Liberals and four fewer than the
NDP. It was the worst Conservative showing in at least three decades.

The
year Stockwell Day lost to Jean Chrétien and the last time a divided
conservative movement took on the Liberals in 2000, the Canadian
Alliance won a majority of B.C. seats (27) and almost 50 per cent of the
province’s popular vote.

Between
2011 and 2015, the Conservative share of the vote went from 45 per cent
to 30 per cent. Over Harper’s majority mandate, the party lost almost
150,000 B.C. supporters.

The Conservatives will be saying goodbye to Harper this weekend. As he heads for the exit, they would be well advised to pay attention to his blind spots.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Bob Fife reports, in the Globe and Mail, that Stephen Harper will resign his seat before Parliament resumes in September:

“He is not going to be there when the House returns in September,” one
close associate said. “He has had some good conversations about what is
next for him. … He has some board discussions happening and he’s looking
at some options about setting up his own institute.”

Apparently, the institute will focus on foreign policy:

The institute is in its early stages of discussion, but friends say it
won’t be academic or domestic-policy focused, such as the conservative
think tank founded by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning. Mr.
Harper’s interests will be directed largely at global “big picture”
issues that he has espoused over the years.

His former policy director, Rachel Curran,
said once Mr. Harper leaves politics, he will want to champion global
free trade, building on his success in negotiating deals with South
Korea and the European Union, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“He
spent tremendous time and energy really concluding these trade
agreements and opening up trade corridors,” Ms. Curran said. “He has got
a really recognized expertise and a lot of respect internationally in
terms of his kind of knowledge.”

She
said Mr. Harper will also want to promote his geopolitical thinking –
whether it’s on human rights, the promotion of democracy or standing up
to authoritarian regimes.

Mr. Harper knows something about authoritarian regimes. He'll need money to fund the institute. Word has it that he has been spending time lately with Las Vegas casino magnet Sheldon Adelson. His base might be a little concerned about where the money comes from. But one suspects the base is not on Harper's mind these days.

No, he's thinking about the world. And that's just what the world needs -- more Stephen Harper.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

First, the TPP may not have sufficient support
to take effect, since under the terms of agreement both Japan and the
United States must be among the ratifying countries. Implementation has
been delayed in Japan where politicians fear a political backlash and
seems increasingly unlikely in the U.S., where the remaining
presidential candidates have tried to outdo one another in their
opposition to the deal.

Both Donald Trump
and Bernie Sanders have been outspoken critics of the TPP from start of
their campaigns. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has shifted her position
from supporter to critic, recently unequivocally stating that “I oppose
the TPP agreement and that means before and after the election.”

If the deal goes down, that's good news -- because new models are emerging for international trade agreements:

Canada already has an alternate blueprint for a
trade strategy to open up key markets throughout Asia. By the
government’s own admission, the Canada-EU Trade Agreement offers a
better investor-state dispute settlement system than the TPP, while the
Canada-South Korea free trade agreement, which was concluded in 2014,
eliminates tariffs without requiring an overhaul of Canadian or South
Korean laws.

There are criticisms of both of those deals, but they offer better models than the TPP.

And a recent analysis by the C.D. Howe Institute claims that the proposed agreement offers Canada few incentives:

For example, a recent C.D. Howe study found
that the Canadian gains may be very modest, with some gains offset by
losses on issues such as copyright and an outflow of royalties. Given
the limited effect of staying out (the study describes the initial
impact as “negligible”), some have suggested that killing the agreement
might be a good thing for the country.

The
C.D. Howe study, which is consistent with several other reports that
found that TPP benefits to Canada are among the lowest of the 12
countries, should not come as a surprise. Canada already has free trade
deals with several key agreement partners, including the U.S., Mexico,
Chile and Peru. Moreover, some Canadian business sectors have told the
government they would be better off removing inter-provincial trade
barriers before working to open markets like Vietnam and Malaysia.

The government is currently holding cross-country hearings on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It will be interesting -- and critical -- to see what Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau decide to do with another piece of Stephen Harper's legacy.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Robert Kagan has been a consistent neo-conservative voice for the last twenty-five years. From his desk at the Brookings Institution, he has advocated for a tougher, more militaristic American foreign policy. Successive Republican administrations have adopted his suggestions. That is why his take on Donald Trump is so interesting. In a recent column, "This Is How Fascism Comes To America," he writes:

The entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology.
It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its
historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy.
Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of
supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not
immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its
political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is
regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their
allegiance is to him and him alone.

Neo-conservatives fear government. But Trump is what the American Founding Fathers feared most -- rule of the mob:

But here is the other threat to liberty that Alexis de Tocqueville and
the ancient philosophers warned about: that the people in a democracy,
excited, angry and unconstrained, might run roughshod over even the
institutions created to preserve their freedoms. As Alexander Hamilton
watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw
play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead
not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power
on the shoulders of the people.

And when a nation chooses one man who will run roughshod over its system of government, the result is fascism:

This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic
countries over the past century, and it has generally been called
“fascism.” Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear
set of prescriptions for what ailed society. “National socialism” was a
bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed;
fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist,
anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about
policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Fuhrer), in
whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he
could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could
vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there
is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is
about the tough man who singlehandedly defends his people against all
threats, foreign and domestic.

Kagan warns his readers that:

Once in power, Trump will owe politicians and their party nothing. He
will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White
House by a mass following devoted only to him. By then that following
will have grown dramatically. Today, less than 5 percent of eligible
voters have voted for Trump. But if he wins the election imagine the
power he would wield: at his command would be the Justice Department,
the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Is a man like Trump,
with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more
humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today?
Does vast power uncorrupt?

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes but
with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac
“tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire
national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or
simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

Kagan used to be a Republican. He now claims that he is an Independent.

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Some people are convinced that Justin Trudeau will pay a price for his less than sunny behaviour in the House last week. Tom Walkom isn't so sure. Canadians, he writes, like to have "chippy" prime ministers:

Trudeau broke all the rules Wednesday when he
marched across the Commons floor, grabbed Conservative whip Gord Brown
by the arm and hustled him to his seat, all in order to get a projected
vote underway.

In the melee, the prime minister also inadvertently elbowed Quebec New Democrat MP Ruth-Ellen Brousseau in the chest.

New Democrats standing nearby said Trudeau used a vulgar synonym for fornication as he urged MPs to get out of his way.

But this kind of behaviour isn't new to prime ministers:

Voters often like it when a prime minister
gets tough or rude. Jean Chrétien suffered no political penalty when, as
prime minister, he grabbed a peaceful protester by the throat and
forced him to the ground.

Pierre Trudeau,
in what became known as the fuddle-duddle incident, famously told
opposition MPs to fornicate with themselves. Voters elected his Liberals
to government three more times after that.

Was it polite behaviour? Certainly not. It showed that Trudeau can be impetuous and far from sunny. More importantly, his actions caused proceedings to ground to a halt. But Trudeau apologized more than once. Other than his apology for residential schools, when was the last time you heard Stephen Harper apologize?

Saturday, May 21, 2016

When Alan Freeman was the Globe and Mail correspondent in Washington, nobody paid attention to Canada. Suddenly, he writes, that has all changed:

Over the past week, major U.S. news outlets like The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post haven’t been able to get enough of Canada. And that was before Thursday’s meltdown on the Commons floor.

In recent weeks, major American media outlets have run stories on the
Fort McMurray wildfire, Canada’s transgender anti-discrimination
legislation, Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau’s plea for more staff help, Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau’s apology to South Asian immigrants turned away
on the Komagata Maru in 1914 — and, of course, the elbows-out fracas
involving Trudeau and several other MPs in the Commons.

Why the change? Call it the Trump-Clinton Syndrome:

Instead of any sense of excitement over a new kind of leadership,
Americans are brooding over the prospect of six more months of a nasty
election campaign — between a reality TV star who seldom mentions a
rival or a foreign leader without resorting to crude insults, and a
political veteran who has trouble shaking her image of arrogance and
entitlement.

The personal weaknesses of Trump and Clinton normally would be enough
to sink either one of them in a presidential election campaign — if it
weren’t for the fact that they’re running against each other. So many
Americans are stuck with a choice between two people they don’t like.

Some Canadians -- people like Conrad Black -- used to look with envy on the United States. Black's envy seems to have disappeared after his acquaintance with American Justice. And it appears that a significant number of Americans are now envying us.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Young Mr.Trudeau is starting to get under my skin. It isn't the Kabuki Theatre the other day in the House that bothers me. It's the announcement that the Liberals plan to contest the class action lawsuit which veterans brought against the Harper government. Tasha Kheiriddin writes:

The vets claimed the Tories were discriminating against combatants in
modern-day conflicts, such as Afghanistan, by offering them lump-sum
payments, rather than the life-long pensions paid to veterans of older
conflicts, such as the Korean War. The issue cost the Conservatives
support among veterans’ groups — a traditional base of support — and
became a black eye for a government that loved to play up the importance
of Canada’s military.

During the election campaign, Mr. Trudeau promised that veterans would not be treated so cavalierly:

“We will demonstrate the respect and appreciation for our veterans that
Canadians rightly expect, and ensure that no veteran has to fight the
government for the support and compensation they have earned.”

The Liberals went farther than that:

The Liberal platform further stated that the federal government has “a
social covenant with all veterans and their families that we must meet
with both respect and gratitude.”

Thursday, May 19, 2016

So you think Canada would never elect a Donald Trump? Think again. Debra Van Brenk writes:

Conservative voters would be more more likely to choose outspoken TV
personality Kevin O'Leary as their party leader among a field of seven
declared and potential candidates for Stephen Harper's old job, a Forum
Research poll suggests.

But among voters generally, not just those likely to vote Tory if an
election were held today, former cabinet minister Peter MacKay leads the
pack.

All it would take would be a party of crazies -- people who are seething with resentment and not very bright -- to make it happen. And a culture that confuses entertainment and politics. Consider the field of potential Conservative leaders:

Forum asked more than 1,500 randomly-chosen adult Canadians who would be
the best Conservative leader from among a field of seven that includes
party stalwart Jason Kenney, the already-declared Maxime Bernier,
interim party leader Rona Ambrose and former cabinet ministers Lisa
Raitt and Kelly Leitch, the latter of which was a children's orthopedic
surgeon in London before entering federal poltiics.

O'Leary is as prepared as Trump to change his positions:

And just as Donald Trump's actual political leanings confound some in
the U.S. Republican party, O'Leary's take on politics has to be
decidedly unsettling to established Conservative candidates. O'Leary has
said his main aim is advocating for tax-paying Canadians and he hasn't
even ruled out running for the Liberals for the next election.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

These are hard days for Fort McMurray. But, Andrew Nikiforuk writes, there is another fire burning -- a slow burning one -- that will eventually bring the place to its knees. And Murray Edwards, the head of Canadian Natural Resources, has seen the future:

Murray Edwards, the billionaire tycoon behind Canadian Natural Resources, one of the largest bitumen extractors, has decamped from Alberta to London, England.

Edwards and company slashed $2.4-billion from CNRL's budget in 2015.
Since the oil price crash, by some accounts, Murray's company has lost 50 per cent of its market value.

(Cenovus, another oilsands player, got cursed with junk bond status.)
Edwards likely has read the tea leaves and
understands that bitumen might not play a significant role in the
secular age of stagnation.

Former CIBC chief economist Jeff Rubin has also seen the future:

Last but not least comes a pithy analysis
by Jeff Rubin, CIBC's former chief economist. Rubin warns that
contraction is the only future for the oilsands unless Canada wishes its
economy to become "obsolete and non-competitive."

He correctly notes that 80 per cent of the
increase in new global oil did not come from OPEC but from high cost
bitumen mines and fracked U.S. shale deposits.
North American corporations, in other words, engineered the global oil glut.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Back in the 1960's, an estimated 100,000 Americans fled to Canada, rather than being drafted into the armed forces of the United States. Former CBC broadcaster Andy Barrie was one of them. He writes:

In Vietnam, it’s called the American War. Not,
mind you, the North American War, because this country, blessedly,
refused to be part of it. Just as we refused to join George Bush’s
so-called “Coalition of the Willing” to stop the spread of those
non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction.

At
the time, Stephen Harper, as Leader of the Official Opposition,
actually apologized to the American people, making it clear he would
have said “ready-aye-ready” to Bush. Years later Harper would reverse
himself, calling the Iraq war “absolutely an error.” But that didn’t
stop him from going after those young soldiers who made the mistake of
equating our country with its government and sought sanctuary in Canada.

A lot fewer Americans fled to Canada. And Stephen Harper deported six of them to face court martials. There are still 15 Americans facing the same fate. It's time to put an end to another part of Harper's legacy:

There are currently 15 known active cases of conscientious objectors in
Canada. There were once estimates of 200 American Iraq War resisters in
Canada, many of them underground waiting for those who went public to
win status before coming forward.

Sad, nasty business, just one among many pieces of nastiness Justin
Trudeau promised to undo if he was elected. Well, he was, and with a
majority. But he’s yet to tell government lawyers to call it quits to
Harper’s deportations.

Harper's justification for sending the six objectors back to the United States was as porous as the thirty-one charges against Mike Duffy:

Harper, in his time, claimed that since military desertion was a crime,
Canada would be granting sanctuary to criminals. This is patent
nonsense. These people broke no laws in Canada and we have no business
enforcing American law. Follow this logic and it would have meant
deporting every escaped slave who reached freedom in Canada on the
Underground Railroad, as they were considered property in the U.S. and
allowing them to stay would have made us recipients of stolen goods.

Monday, May 16, 2016

Paul Godfrey appeared before the Heritage Committee last week to ask the government for a hand. It was more than a little ironic that the publisher who would prefer to get government out of our lives was coming to it cap in hand. But, Tom Walkom writes, Canadian governments have been giving publishers hand outs for a long time:

In his book Making National News,
Ryerson University historian Gene Allen details the agonizing debates
among publishers over the federal government’s handsome subsidy to their
wire service co-operative, Canadian Press.

The
subsidy was required in part because some Canadian publishers were
unwilling or unable to pay the high rates charged by telegraph companies
for transmitting news over the wire.

During
the First World War, publishers also convinced Ottawa that a
government-subsidized Canadian wire service would act as a pro-British
antidote to news routed through the U.S.-based Associated Press.

At one point, Canada’s wire service was subsidized by both the British and Canadian governments.

In the early years, Ottawa rewarded friendly
newspapers by contracting out government printing to them. Later,
publishers lobbied for and won reduced rate postage for newspapers. At a
time when many readers received their papers through the mail, this was
a significant bonus.

Still later,
publishers persuaded Ottawa to change the income tax system to favour
domestic publications. Those businesses that advertised in Canadian
newspapers and magazines could write the cost off. Those that advertised
in foreign publications could not.

Known informally as the Maclean’s law, this rule proved of particular benefit to the newsmagazine of that name.

Surprisingly, Walkom believes Godfrey's proposal has merit -- perhaps not just because Postmedia is drowning in debt, but because Walkom's own publisher, Torstar,lost $53.5 million in the first quarter of this year.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

There are some ghostly similarities, Michael Winship writes, between the American election of 1968 and this year's election. 1968 was the year that Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. It was the year there were riots in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic convention. And it marked the ascension of Richard Nixon at the Republican convention. It was also the year that George Wallace ran as a third party candidate.

New York Times columnist Russell Baker described Wallace's campaign:

Wallace’s crude animal reaction to the complexities of American society
found a sympathetic hearing that summer among millions baffled by the
speed at which the future was hurtling upon them and frustrated by their
individual impotence against the tyranny of vast computerized
organizations spreading through American life. With his snake-oil
miracle cures, Wallace satisfied a deep public yearning to be deluded
with promises of easy solutions.

Wallace's daughter recently pulled no punches when she compared Donald Trump to her father:

George Wallace’s own daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, recently told National Public Radio
that both men have played to our basest instincts. “Trump and my father
say out loud what people are thinking but don’t have the courage to
say,” she said. “They both were able to adopt the notion that fear and
hate are the two greatest motivators of voters that feel alienated from
government.”

Winship reminds his readers of Mark Twain's notion of history. "History," Twain wrote, "doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Justin Trudeau has done an admirable job of tending to his image, Murray Dobbin writes. But his real test as prime minister will be how he deals with the Isle of Man Tax Dodgers:

By now most people are familiar with the KPMG tax "sham"
uncovered by CBC News. The scheme involved at least 26 wealthy clients
(minimum contribution, $5 million) for whom KPMG set up shell companies
in the Isle of Man, one of many tax havens for the rich and large
corporations.

The Canada Revenue Agency initially said the scheme was "grossly negligent" and "intended to deceive."

But 15 of the 26 participants would end up getting special treatment.
Some of the first ones caught were assessed huge penalties, but later
KPMG clients were offered a secret deal. The "amnesty" agreement
granted rich KPMG clients immunity from civil and criminal prosecution
and freedom from any penalties, fines or interest as long as they paid
the taxes they had dodged. Secrecy was written into the agreement: "The
taxpayer agrees to ensure the confidentiality of the offer and will not
inform any person of the conditions of the offer..."

It's interesting that this story came to light just as the Panama Papers fiasco was surfacing. The root of the problem, Dobbins writes is the cozy relationship which exists between top executives at the CRA and Canada's major Accounting firms:

The practice of making deals and providing amnesty for the biggest
offenders seem rooted in the cozy relationship between senior CRA
officials and senior management figures from the accounting firms that
facilitate the scams. The CBC uncovered five years of expensive receptions
hosted by KPMG and other accounting and law firms for senior agency
executives -- including those involved in overseas compliance.

"Senior enforcement officials from the
Canada Revenue Agency were treated to private receptions at an exclusive
Ottawa club, hosted by a small group of influential tax accountants
that included personnel from KPMG -- even as the firm was facing a CRA
probe for running a $130-million tax dodge in the Isle of Man," the CBC
reported.

Despite strict rules
stating employees must "not accept gifts, hospitality, or other
benefits that will, or could, have a real, apparent or potential
influence on your objectivity and neutrality in performing your CRA
duties," these unseemly get-togethers became routine. One that took
place at the exclusive Rideau Club in June 2014 saw more than 20
"high-ranking CRA executives" wined and dined by accountancy and law
firms including KPMG. CRA executives were actually "required" to attend
by the agency. The same day they had been treated to a luncheon followed
by a session where they were lobbied by KPMG and other firms.

Little folk pay penalties. But the big fish continue to swim unimpeded. The ball is in Trudeau's Court.

Friday, May 13, 2016

Just before Mike Duffy's acquittal, the leader of the Conservative caucus in the Senate, Leo Housakas, released the following statement:

“In the event Senator Duffy is acquitted on all counts, he will
immediately be reinstated to the Senate as a member in full standing
with full pay and access to all office resources. Senator Duffy will be
allowed to take his seat in the Chamber at the next scheduled sitting.”

Instead of turning the page, Housakos is trying to turn the page back.
Here’s what is on the table: Out of the $124,000 in travel expenses and
contracts examined by the RCMP — the spending that provided the
foundation for its charges against Duffy — Housakos wants his committee
to review $56,546 in travel and $16,995 in contracts.

Why? Harris speculates that:

The operative idea here seems to be that if Conservatives in the Senate
can find Duffy guilty of something — anything — it will have a
restorative effect on Harper’s soiled reputation, and take the sting out
of Judge Vaillancourt’s otherwise devastating verdict.

The Conservatives are perseverating -- which, by the way, is one of the indicators of brain injury.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Your local post office used to be a bank -- until 1968. That's when Canada Post got out of the banking business. But, Linda McQuaig writes, there are good reasons for restoring banking services to Canada Post's mandate:

As they’ve turned their attention to catering
to the wealthy, Canada’s six big banks have shut down more than 1,700
branches across the country in recent years. In many rural communities
today, you’re no more likely to see a bank than a buffalo.

This
has left hundreds of thousands of Canadians without bank accounts,
including many low-income city dwellers – notably young people with poor
credit ratings and lack of identification – who now rely on pay-day loan companies charging annualized interest rates well above 300 per cent.

As email cut into its profits, the executives at Canada Post suggested to the Harper government that getting back into banking could solve Canada Post's woes:

But if the idea seemed like a sure winner, it
ran into a major roadblock – the fierce ideological objections of
Stephen Harper’s Conservative cabinet. After all, postal banking would
be public banking, and the Harperites were hell-bent on shrinking
government, not expanding it.

So instead of
opting for a win-win strategy, the Harper cabinet came up with a
lose-lose strategy for the post office: dramatic increases in the cost
of postage stamps and the elimination of home delivery.

But the proposal is back on the table. And it offers distinct advantages -- not just to the post office, but to all Canadians:

A postal banking system could even inject some
competition into Canada’s highly concentrated banking sector, one of
the least competitive in the world. According to a 2014 IMF report,
Canada is among a handful of countries where the three largest banks control as much as 60 per cent of banking assets.

This
uncompetitive situation has left Canadian bank customers – even those
lucky enough to locate a branch – facing some of the world’s highest
banking fees.

If postal offices throughout
the country offered a range of banking services – savings accounts,
low-fee chequing accounts, low-interest credit cards, small business
loans – the big banks might be forced to compete, novel as that sounds.

The CEO's of the five major banks will howl. After all, "even in last year’s sluggish economy, they collectively enjoyed $35
billion in profits – about $4 million per hour per day – with bank CEOs
among Canada’s top-paid executives."

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Tim Harper writes that Justin Trudeau will soon be under pressure to approve a pipeline -- whether he wants to or not:

When the economic cost of this tragedy is
tallied, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is going to be under
renewed pressure to approve a pipeline and get oil to market from a
province staggering under the weight of historic economic troubles.

Oil
production in Alberta is down a million barrels a day — this in a
province already coping with jobless rates unseen in 20 years, which
bled 21,000 jobs last month before the fires, and now must cope with oil
patch shutdowns and international investor nervousness.

Beyond Alberta, the fires are going to have a huge impact on the Canadian economy.

How he can do that and meet his commitments to reduce greenhouse gases seems impossible. Add to that the Liberals commitment -- announced yesterday by Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett -- to sign the United Nations' Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and it's clear that Trudeau has to try and unscramble a political Rubik's Cube.

Mr. Harper is right: "The expectations and moral suasion from Alberta will be even greater.
The pipeline-environmental-aboriginal axis on which Trudeau spins is
about to get a lot more dizzying."

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

The central problem with our
winner-take-all system is that the composition of our elected parliament
does not reflect how we actually voted. A candidate who receives a
plurality of the votes wins, even if a majority of the voters chose
others. The majority of the votes in such a case have no impact on the
outcome of the election.

That means a
party that receives only a minority of votes, say less than 40 per cent,
can form a majority government, taking full control of the policy
agenda. In fact, this is the norm in Canada. But this cannot continue.
In a representative democracy, representativeness surely should matter.

The Liberals claim that the new system will be guided by eight principles. The authors write:

We note, nonetheless, that only a
proportional system can meet the government’s first principle: To ensure
that votes are fairly translated into elected results.

No
more staying at home because our preferred candidate cannot win. No
more so-called strategic voting in which we vote to stop a party we like
the least rather than choose the candidate or party that best reflects
our views.

Not surprisingly, countries
with some form of proportional representation – and that is the majority
of advanced democracies and 85 per cent of OECD countries – elect more
women, more members of minority communities and more diverse
legislatures.

Proportional Representation is not a vague theory:

Given that most democracies have opted for
greater proportionality, there’s a good deal of evidence on how it’s
working. And it is working.

Voter
participation and trust in government are higher. There has been some
increase but no proliferation of parties. It does become harder – though
not impossible – for single parties to get a majority so these
countries are often governed by coalitions. But coalitions in fact
provide good, stable government. Elections are no more frequent and
politics tend to be less polarized because parties know they may have to
work together.

They warn that preferential ballots won't bring about these changes. Only a genuinely proportional system will do that.

Monday, May 09, 2016

Dan Leger writes in the Halifax Chronicle-Heraldthat a President Trump would be a gift to the enemies of the United States:

But if your goal is to undermine American democracy, then wrecking a
Grand Old Party is useful. If you’re ISIS or Vladimir Putin and
democracy is your enemy, Trump is your friend. He’s wrecking one of two
legitimate American parties.

Trump will further undermine democracy by stifling free speech and the
independent press by making libel suits easier to prosecute and by
installing judges who agree with him.

Trump says he’ll encourage Japan and South Korea to acquire nuclear
weapons, almost certainly setting off an arms race in Asia. That won’t
make Americans safer.

Trump says he’ll use the U.S. military to impose America’s will on the
world. He doesn’t realize that Washington’s been trying that for years,
and failing.

His anti-Islamic rhetoric is a boon to ISIS:

Then by fulfilling his promise to mistreat American Muslims, he’ll
deliver propaganda ammunition to radical Islamists around the world. You
can’t buy that kind of publicity. President Trump might turn out to be
the best friend the terrorists ever had.

And consider what he'll accomplish at home:

Meanwhile Trump will sharpen racial tensions in the U.S., which are
already acute. African Americans see him as the white man’s candidate
and that’s never good.

Within 100 days of a Trump presidency, the promised wall with Mexico
will be designed, an immigration ban on Muslims will be in place, an
audit of the Federal Reserve will be started as well as a plan to repeal
the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.

Sunday, May 08, 2016

Canadians have been appalled by the Fort McMurray Fire. But, Ed Strurzik writes, some people saw it coming:

Fire scientists and fire managers actually saw this coming back in
2009 when 70 of them gathered in Victoria to address the issue of
climate change and what impact it was going to have on the forest fire
situation in Canada. Each one of them was already well aware that fires
were burning bigger, hotter, faster, and in more unpredictable ways than
ever before.

''We're exceeding thresholds all the
time,'' said Mike Flannigan, who was at the time a research scientist
with the Canadian Forest Service. ''We'd better start acting soon.''

The dragon in the woods is climate change:

There are a number of reasons why fires are going to burn bigger,
hotter, faster, and more often in the future. There are more people
living and working in the boreal forest, and like it or not, people
start a lot of fires -- more than half that occur in Canada. And in
fighting fires so religiously to protect valuable timber, oil sands,
pipelines and communities, we've created an unnaturally large amount of
old growth forest in the boreal, where spruce and pine are prevalent and
highly combustible.

But there isn't an expert out there who
doubts that climate change is the biggest reason why we're losing the
battle to control wildfires.

For every one degree of warming, there
needs to be 15 per cent more precipitation to keep the fine combustible
fuels on the ground sufficiently moist. So if temperatures rise by about
three degrees by the end of the century, which is as conservative an
estimate as there is, we'll need 45 per cent more rain. Flannigan says
there is nothing in the climate models that suggest we'll come close. In
fact, we're likely to get less precipitation in some areas.

More heat is also going to result in more
lightning, which currently accounts for 85 per cent of the area burned in
Canada. Typically, lightning occurs in clusters where there can be 50
to 100 strikes in a day. But increasingly we're seeing lightning events
such as the one that occurred in Alaska last year when a slow-moving
storm unleashed 50,000 lightning strikes in just five days. More than
five million acres of trees were destroyed in a fire season that turned
out to be second worst in the state's history. No one had ever seen
anything like it.

What's more, insects like the mountain pine
beetle and the spruce bark beetle that kill or weaken mature spruce and
pine will continue to proliferate in these warmer environments, adding
fuel for combustion.

Premier Brad Wall wants a national fire strategy -- a good idea. But, so far, he -- and many others -- have had little policy to offer on climate change. Without those policies, fires like the Fort Mac Fire will be bigger, hotter and more frequent.

Saturday, May 07, 2016

These days, we hear frequent stories about the passenger on an airplane who loses it and has to be restrained by the flight crew. Mark Kingwell writes that air rage has overtaken our politics. The root causes of both are about class:

So there we have it, the perfect image of democratic society circa 2016.

This
is airborne hyperdemocratic dysfunction, the condition in which
everyone has been promised everything, but where some kinds of
everything are never enough to go around. Because they can’t all be
first-class seats.

Some people are just
happy to have a seat on the plane, maybe want a better seat for their
kids one day. Others can’t believe it took so freaking long for them to
get on the plane, but they’ll suppress their rage to avoid getting
kicked off now.

But there are a lot of passengers who have had enough:

So they respond with gleeful rage when a
Row 4 billionaire slides back and tells them that their raw economy-seat
deal is the result not just of the elites ahead but also the rapists,
unbelievers and possible terrorists behind. How did those people even
get on the plane? Send them back! (Note: There is no farther back for
them to go.)

A couple of middle rows
are trying to warn everyone that the plane is about to crash, but they
keep interrupting each other and preening in their porthole reflections.
Some others, permanently seated in Economy Plus, whatever that is, are
trying to recall the original purpose of the plane, pointing out that
the bad version of the plane was predicted in Plato, or Tocqueville, or
Canetti.

They are all shouted down by
“safety reminders” of where the emergency exits are. A chant goes up in
Rows 12 and 13, encouraged by the wackadoodle from Row 4: “Get out! Get
out!” A charming man with no assigned seat is telling everyone the whole
plane is rigged. A bossy lady from Row 1 says she knows all about the
plane, her family used to run the plane and everyone should trust her
with the plane.

And, then, there are those passengers who always fly first class:

In first class, meanwhile, the pinot gris has arrived tepid. What is the point of success if you don’t get to enjoy it right now?
Speaking of which, yes, the pinot gris is warm, but it’s also not
arriving quickly enough. No, I’m not drunk. Where is my smoked salmon?
Get your hand off my arm! Who’s flying the plane? Not clear, except that
they almost certainly work for the horrible people sitting right behind
them.

If all hell breaks loose on the plane, it may not make it to its destination.

Friday, May 06, 2016

If you want to know what the Conservatives have learned since their election defeat, Michael Harris writes, you should read the op-ed which Joe Oliver recently penned for the National Post:

Oliver tried to make the argument that the Trudeau government is
overturning all the wonderful things done by Side Door Steve (he doesn’t
sit in Parliament — he lurks there). Take the Office of
Religious Freedom (ORF). Joe sees this Harper-era initiative as a giant
step forward for mankind. Others, whose comfort zone isn’t necessarily
the Middle Ages, prefer the separation of church and state — a secular
approach to governance. (Yes, Joe, it’s a radical thought. But a lot has happened since the Battle of Hastings.)

Joe also slammed the Liberals for scuppering such Conservative
initiatives as increasing the OAS retirement age from 65 to 67. And yes,
Trudeau did reverse that in his government’s first budget, as promised.

What Joe neglects to mention is that Side Door Steve once promised to never
touch Canada’s pension system. Then, one day, he woke up on the other
side of the bed and did just that. He even made the announcement in
Davos, Switzerland, rather than in Parliament. There was no supporting
Finance Department white paper to justify the move. That sent coffee
rockets jetting out of Kevin Page’s nostrils. It was Steve in communion
with his belly-button — again.

Oliver argues that the Trudeau government is overturning all the brilliant things the Harper government did:

We should have kept those bombers bombing in Iraq, we never should have
imposed all those pesky environmental restrictions on pipeline projects,
we should carry on stripping citizenship from convicted terrorists and
we should have invested $3.2 billion on military spending right away,
instead of delaying it.

And he neglects to mention all the things the Harper government overturned:

The Law Reform Commission, disbanded. Katimavik, obliterated. The
National Roundtable on the Economy and the Environment, abandoned.
Kelowna, dumped. Kyoto, ditto. The Wheat Board, sold. The long-form
census, cancelled. The convention on fighting drought in Africa,
defenestrated. CIDA, castrated. Priceless diplomatic assets such as
Strathmore in Ireland and the Canadian High Commissioner’s residence in
the U.K., auctioned off for short-term gain.

There is still some of Harper's legacy which Trudeau hasn't overturned -- the Saudi arms deal, and the Trans Pacific Partnership. So the jury is still out on Mr. Trudeau. But the jury came to a decision on Harper last October.

Thursday, May 05, 2016

Now that Donald Trump has become the one and only Republican candidate for president, it's worth returning to a column that Henry Giroux wrote in December of last year. Its title was Fascism in Donald Trump's United States. Giroux wrote the column after Trump proposed banning Muslims from the country:

Donald Trump's blatant appeal to fascist ideology and policy
considerations took a more barefaced and dangerous turn this week when
he released a statement calling for "a total and complete shutdown of
Muslims entering the United States." Trump qualified this racist appeal
to voters' fears about Muslims by stating that such a ban is necessary
"until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."

What almost none of the presidential candidates or mainstream political
pundits have admitted, however, is not only that Trump's comments form a
discourse of hate, bigotry and exclusion, but also that such
expressions of racism and fascism are resonating deeply in a landscape
of US culture and politics crafted by 40 years of conservative
counterrevolution.

Trump's fascist politics were revealed a month earlier,

when Trump mocked Serge Kovaleski,
a New York Times investigative reporter living with a disability, at a
rally in South Carolina. This contemptuous reference to Kovaleski's
physical disability was morally odious and painful to observe, but not
in the least surprising: Trump is consistently a hatemonger and spreads
his message without apology in almost every public encounter in which he
finds himself. In this loathsome instance, Trump simply expanded his
hate-filled discourse in a new direction, after having already
established the deeply ingrained racism and sexism at the heart of his
candidacy.

We've seen this kind of stuff before:

Moreover, Trump's hateful attitude toward people with disabilities
points to an earlier element of Hitler's program of genocide in which
people with physical and mental disabilities were viewed as disposable
because they allegedly undermined the Nazi notion of the "master race."
The demonization, objectification and pathologizing of people with
disabilities was the first step in developing the foundation for the
Nazis' euthanasia program
aimed at those declared unworthy of life. This lesson seems to be lost
on the mainstream media, who largely viewed Trump's despicable remarks
toward people with disabilities as simply insulting.

There is a feeling these days that, if you play the Hitler card, you've lost the argument. Perhaps we've simply forgotten recent history.

Wednesday, May 04, 2016

When news broke that John Ridsdel had been beheaded by terrorists, Justin Trudeau sounded like William Tecumseh Sherman: “I do want to make one thing perfectly, crystal clear,” Trudeau said,
his ministers standing behind him. “Canada does not – and will not – pay
ransom to terrorists, directly or indirectly.”

Andrew Cohen writes that, at that moment, Justin also sounded like his father:

It was a bold, bald refusal. What was striking about his declaration
and the subsequent explanation was his tone and delivery. It was largely
free of the hesitation – the verbal tick of ums and ahs – that
sometimes punctuate Trudeau’s speech.

His statement on ransom felt instinctive, even guttural. It flowed
from him like his defence of citizens’ rights (“a Canadian is a Canadian
is a Canadian”) in the election campaign. Or when he invoked the memory
of his father (“I’m incredibly proud to be Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s son
and I’m incredibly lucky to be raised with those values.”)

In talking about hostages, he exuded a confidence shorn of doubt. More than ever, he was his father.

The jury is still out on whether or not Justin is his father's son. And, responses in these situations are more difficult than they at first appear. Trudeau the Elder said he would not bargain with James Cross's kidnappers. However,

Morality is messy. Six weeks after the kidnappings in Quebec in 1970,
Trudeau’s government negotiated with the kidnappers who held Cross. In
exchange for his release, the kidnappers were allowed safe passage to
Cuba.

Ultimately, then, Pierre Trudeau did what was necessary to save a
life. In a similar situation, his rhetoric notwithstanding, would Justin
Trudeau not do the same?

That's a difficult question. Chances are that Justin will be tested on this file yet again. And we'll know the answer.

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

In the wake of the Duffy Affair, Errol Mendes writes, the Senate has begun reforming itself:

The Senate to which Mr. Duffy returns is, in a multitude of ways, much
different from the chamber from which he was suspended. The Senate
leadership, in particular those on the powerful internal economy committee,
has greatly tightened expenditure and travel rules. In the wake of the
damning Auditor-General’s report, the Senate leadership, along with most
senators, will also endorse a forthcoming independent oversight
mechanism that they promise will be far more rigorous than anything seen
in the House of Commons in terms of financial transparency and
accountability.

The Duffy Affair began with Stephen Harper's claim that Mr. Duffy was a resident of Prince Edward Island -- a claim that Duffy himself had a hard time swallowing. And, when Harper referred his plans for reform to the Supreme Court, the Court informed him that reform would have to be done with the consent of the provinces -- because the Senate had to reflect the regions of the country.

So, as the Senate gets back to work, one of the first items on its agenda should be clarifying what residency means:

For this reason, the very loose rules of
primary residence undermines the architecture of the modernized Senate.
So, too, do the so-called strengthened rules that say senators only have
to show that their driver’s licence and health card comes from their
province of appointment, and that their taxes are filed in the same
province.

To improve the Senate’s
credibility, and build Canadians’ trust in the revamped chamber, every
senator must prove that the actual length of time they spend in their
province reflects how they can be legitimately representing the
interests of their constituents. Their physical assets, including
property, should reflect and reinforce that representation.

Owning a cottage in a province should not be enough to make you a senator.

Monday, May 02, 2016

Lately, Michael Harris has turned his sights on military equipment -- its sale and purchase. When it comes to those Saudi armored vehicles, he says, there's a skunk in the woodpile. And a familiar stench is beginning to arise -- again -- over the F-35. Over at the Ministry of Defense, the word is that the purchase of the F-35 is still under consideration -- despite Justin Trudeau's promise that it was dead. Harris writes:

This is an issue in which Justin Trudeau either earns his wings as a new
type of politician, or he ditches in the same sea of double-talk that
swallowed up his predecessors. Either his government is running the
show, or bureaucrats over at Industry Canada are – the ones who are
still dazzled by the lure of industrial benefits for the Canadian
aerospace industry if Canada only sticks with the F-35.

The Harper government pumped out plenty of fog about the F-35. And the United States Air Force continues to cloud the skies. But the news on the F-35 -- and how it performs -- keeps getting worse:

Despite all the public relations that tax dollars can buy, the Pentagon
doesn’t even know if the $100-million planes are fit for combat. In the
United States, the F-35 program was supposed to deliver 1,013 aircraft
by fiscal 2016; it has delivered 179. Since the project began in 2003,
the cost of the aircraft has doubled. According to the Government Budget
Office in Washington, it costs $30,000 an hour to fly. The last F-35 is
now scheduled to be delivered in 2040 — fifth generation jets produced
at horse and buggy speeds.

Five of six F-35s were recently unable to take off from Mountain Home
Air Force Base in Idaho. After 15 years of “development” and billions of
dollars of investment, the planes could not boot up their proprietary
software to get airborne — a story first reported in Flight Global and picked up by the Daily Mail.

Consider the opinion of that well-known peacenik John McCain about the
F-35 program. If anyone should have been an advocate for this futuristic
weapon it should have been McCain. Instead, America’s most famous
pilot-cum-POW and the Republican senator from Arizona, excoriated the
F-35 last week at a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He
said he could not “fathom” how the delivery schedule of the F-35 made
any strategic sense. He added that the history of the F-35, “has been
both a scandal and a tragedy with respect to cost, schedule and
performance.”

Mr. Trudeau still needs to prove he's in charge -- not the oil barons, and not the military-industrial complex. Grounding the Flying Edsel would be a step in the right direction.

Sunday, May 01, 2016

We've been told that the "Sharing Economy" is the way of the future. But a new book by Tom Slee questions that proposition. Tom Walkom writes:

But as Tom Slee writes in his authoritative new book What’s Yours is Mine, the original idea, however laudable, has turned into something far darker.

Or as he puts it: “The sharing economy
is extending a harsh and deregulated free market into previously
protected areas of our lives. The leading companies are now corporate
juggernauts themselves.”

Slee holds a PhD in theoretical chemistry and works for a Waterloo software company. He knows something about innovation. But he believes that companies like Uber and Airbnb are innovations which do more harm than good:

Uber enthusiasts, he writes, attribute its
success to technology. But the real reason Uber thrives is that it
avoids paying many of the costs borne by regulated taxi services,
including insurance and mechanical fitness tests.

More important, and again unlike regulated
taxi firms, it is not required to provide services to everyone, such as
those using wheelchairs.

When Uber enters a city, Slee writes, it usually offers bonuses to its drivers and discounts to its customers.

Over time, as it captures more of the market,
these incentives are scaled back. In the end, Uber ends up raking in as
much revenue as regulated taxi fleet owners, yet faces lower costs.

Airbnb also thrives because it doesn't have to play by the rules that govern other property owners:

Accommodation sharing, too, is not always what
it purports to be. Airbnb claims to connect those needing hotel space
with ordinary people willing to rent out an apartment or extra room.

The reality is that in some cities almost half
of Airbnb’s hosts have multiple listings — that is, they are in the
landlord business.

Yet unlike regular bed-and-breakfast
operations, Airbnb landlords are not required to adhere to government
health and safety rules.

Nor, to the dismay of some neighbours, are they subject to zoning bylaws.

It's more of the same -- from the same folks who brought you Neo-liberalism.

About Me

A retired English teacher, I now write about public policy and, occasionally, personal experience. I leave it to the reader to determine if I practice what I preached to my students for thirty-two years.